Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Send To Toys 2.5

I read about this on Pirillo’s Picks

Send To Toys is an enhancement of the Send To system menu.
- Send To Toys Control Panel Applet allows you to manage the Send To system menu content, and configure the various Send To Toys settings.
- “Add to Send To menu” and “Remove from Send To menu” allows you to personalize the Send To system menu for drives, folders, and programs.

It’s got all sorts of great options. Check it out!

Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior

From the New York Times:

Jett Lucas, a 14-year-old friend, tells me the kids in his middle school send one other a steady stream of instant messages through the day. But there’s a problem.

“Kids will say things to each other in their messages that are too embarrassing to say in person,” Jett tells me. “Then when they actually meet up, they are too shy to bring up what they said in the message. It makes things tense.”

Jett’s complaint seems to be part of a larger pattern plaguing the world of virtual communications, a problem recognized since the earliest days of the Internet: flaming, or sending a message that is taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom now for Sale at Adobe.com

Photoshop Lightroom, the much anticipated new software from Adobe is now available for purchase from the Adobe Store.  Developed for professional photographers who need to manage and adjust large volumes of photographs,  Lightroom allows quick and easy adjustment to a large number of images from a variety of formats.

Watch here for review of Adobe Lightroom in the future.

U.S. servers slurp more power than Mississippi

From TechRepublic:

It’s no secret that the servers behind every Web 2.0 company, bank Internet site and corporate e-mail system are consuming ever larger amounts of power. But now a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study to be released Thursday has quantified exactly how much.

Servers in the United States and their attendant cooling systems consumed 45 billion kilowatt-hours of energy in 2005. That’s more than Mississippi and 19 other states, according to study author Jonathan Koomey, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and consulting professor at Stanford University.

And the computers’ electricity appetite is still growing fast.

Cracking Down on Video Piracy

From BusinessWeek:

The pressure on Google to institute more aggressive copyright protections and policies is mounting. The latest heat emanates from social-networking site MySpace, which announced Feb. 12 that it is expanding the use of audio screening technology to block the uploading of unlicensed videos to its site. The company already uses “fingerprinting” technology licensed from content management company Audible Magic to filter out music owned by major labels.

In a statement, MySpace Chief Executive and co-founder Chris DeWolfe said the company’s action was intended to show its users, many of whom are musicians, that it respects their work and ownership rights.

Trivial Pursuit - Original Genus Edition Updates and Corrections

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I read on Ken Jennings’ Blog about a site that reviews Trivial Pursuit questions and summarizes their accuracy.

That final percentage in the lower-left corner of this table tells the amazing story… over 95% of Trivial Pursuit’s original questions are still accurate 25 years later! Impressive.

If you are into trivia, you should definitely check it out!

Need to convert a file?

Regular reader Pat sent along a link to some file conversion utilities:

Ever get that need to convert a file and you don’t have the software to do the job? There are two sites that I have been using, and are quite handy. One is Pixer.us, and the other one is Zamzar.com. Pixer.us let’s you upload images, which you then can resize, crop, and save to the appropriate format instantly. Zamzars’ online conversion tool will convert any file and email it to you for free. File sizes are limited to 100mb, so don’t expect to convert any large format movies.

I’ve mentioned Zamzar before, but hadn’t heard of Pixer. They’re both worth checking out!

The Best Free Software

From PC Magazine:

Most software is expensive and bloated. Yet free software typically does one task and does it with precision and elegance. Among the thousands of free apps available on the Web, how do you find the best, most reliable ones for your needs?

To produce this story, we asked PC Magazine staffers to share their best-loved free software and were inundated with responses.

Tech experts plot to catch identity thieves

From USA Today:

The topic of data protection stole the show at the RSA Conference on computer security here this week. Identity theft and corporate espionage were dominant themes among the 15,000 attendees.

And with good reason. Data are the new currency of the Internet age for legitimate — and illegitimate — businesses, says Howard Schmidt, former chief information security officer of eBay who now is a consultant. Data have never been shared as quickly, and in such vast amounts.

But as millions of Americans use personal data to shop and bank online, and as more companies store data electronically, they remain targets for online fraudsters, Schmidt and others said.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, security experts, politicians and other analysts offered their takes on the problems, and suggestions to fix them

Create your own word puzzle (Wheel of Fortune style)

Create your own Wheel of Fortune style word puzzle at Atom Smasher:

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I read about this on Google Blogoscoped.